Scientists are attempting to verify if the blood stains on a sofa which are reputed to be around two centuries old come from Russian literary hero Alexander Pushkin, according to Russian reports.

Blood traces on the leather sofa at the Pushkin Apartment Museum in St Petersburg have long been assumed to come from Pushkin, who died aged 37 in 1837 following a duel with Georges d'Anthès, with whom his wife was allegedly having an affair. Shot in the stomach, Pushkin, author of the epic verse novel Eugene Onegin, and widely held to be Russia's greatest ever writer, died two days later at home.

But now the St Petersburg Times reports that experts from the Leningrad Oblast Legal and Medical Analysis Bureau have taken 27 swabs from the sofa, including one blood sample, in an attempt to confirm the blood's provenance. The tests will also attempt to establish whether Pushkin might have survived the gunshot wound had he been taken to hospital, rather than being treated at his home.

Yury Molin, deputy head of the Leningrad Oblast Legal and Medical Analysis Bureau, told the paper that preliminary findings showed the blood came from a man, and was left many years ago. He added that in order to prove that the blood belonged to Pushkin, a blood sample from the waistcoat the author was wearing when he was wounded would also need to be tested, and that this analysis would take some time.